Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will ensure that high standards of practice are enforced for social care services subcontracted to independent social care agencies.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England. All providers of regulated activities, including National Health Service and independent providers, have to register with the CQC and follow a set of fundamental standards of safety and quality below which care should never fall.

In a commissioning/contracting/sub-contracting arrangement, there are some scenarios in which the CQC does not have visibility or powers due to how it registers providers.

The CQC’s approach is currently to seek to identify one party for registration, where it can, rather than seek to regulate multiple parties for the same activity – this is usually the party closest to care delivery rather than parties higher up contractual or corporate structures.

The CQC has plans to address registration of multiple parties through its Registration Transformation work.